Fighting to the Death (11 page)

T
ruth was that the money I got from that first fight really made a big difference to my life at that time. I finally moved out of my mum’s house into my own one-bedroomed flat in Atherton Road, Stratford, and I went back to hod-carrying. The cushion of the extra money plus a regular job felt very good.

About a week after moving in, I went down on one knee and asked Carole – we were both just nineteen at the time – if she’d live with me in my tiny, bare flat that contained nothing more than a bed, a fridge, a cooker and a couple of hand-me-down chairs. Oh, and I also begged her to marry me, naturally. She nodded her head so I took that as a yes and headed round to ask her dad if he’d let me be his son-in-law. He just shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘Whatever Carole wants.’ Carole’s parents didn’t like me much at first but then who could blame them?
Here I was, this big thug of a geezer who was about to steal their daughter away from them.

With a wedding on the horizon, I knew I’d have to save hard since I couldn’t expect Carole’s family to cough up for everything. I desperately needed the security that a marriage and children would offer. Looking back on it, I was piling pressure on myself. Carole expected a decent-sized wedding, naturally. But my money from that first fight wasn’t going to cover it.

One morning I woke up and decided to call Bill and make myself available for another fight. I allowed myself to get caught up in Bill’s dodgy fights again because, besides the money, I still hankered after that adrenaline rush I’d first enjoyed when I’d boxed as a kid. I wanted that feeling again – the elation, the invincibility that came with being number one. I had something to prove – to myself.

A lot of people will think I’m a nutter for even considering another fight but unless you’ve been in the ring you don’t know how strong that bug really is. I’d been hooked since I was a kid and now I’d found something to replace boxing, which had been the love of my life. Call it a cry for attention. Call it what you like, but I was locked in.

I continued not to tell Carole what I was up to because it wasn’t fair to put her through all that anguish and worry. This wasn’t the best way to treat the girl I was about to marry, but you have to understand how important it was to me that -she had everything she wanted. I didn’t want the problems experienced by my mum and dad and the pressures that forced them apart. Bill had also already made it crystal clear that the cage was a highly secretive world and I’d be endangering the life of anyone I spilt the beans to.

I made out to Carole that I’d started working on the door of a club in the West End, to give me the cover to begin a new, strict training regime for the next fight. Carole was working as a telephonist at BT at the time. Three evenings a week she played for the local volleyball team at the Eastway Sports Centre.

By this time I had a phone in the flat so Bill was able to call me direct. He eventually rang up and announced the next fight would be in two days’ time.

‘The money’s good – five grand,’ he said and paused. ‘We’re goin’ over the water for this one.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Just get yourself in shape. I’ll do the rest,’ he said, ignoring my question.

Apart from that trip to Jersey when I was a kid, I’d never been out of England. Where did he mean by across the water? It really bugged me. I didn’t fancy going to a foreign place for a fight. Anything could happen abroad.

I hardly slept a wink over the next two days. I had a bad feeling in my gut about what I was letting myself in for. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I couldn’t talk to anyone else about how I felt.

On the day of the fight, two of Bill’s heavy-looking mates picked me up in the early evening at Stratford. We headed east on the Old Southend Road. I still didn’t know what ‘over the water’ really meant. An hour later we drove into what looked like a pitch-black field but turned out to be a small airstrip. Then I spotted Bill’s Jag parked up alongside a smallish twin-engined plane. Where the hell were we going?

It was black as the ace of spades except for some small lights alongside a piece of rough tarmac that I presumed was the runway. Bill opened my door and greeted me like a longlost son, which I didn’t much like. It was a performance for a bunch of fellas whose heads I could see looking our way from inside the plane. There were at least eight people already on board when I clambered in. They all seemed to know Bill and he introduced me to each of them as ‘that kid I was telling you about’.

The geezers already in the plane were in their forties and fifties and they all looked as if they had a bit of form. Bill walked me to the back of the plane to meet two huge black geezers called Neville and Wayne. ‘They’ll look after you for this trip,’ said Bill. I kept wondering why the hell I needed two huge minders: was Bill expecting some kind of aggro or what? As I nodded my head at Neville and Wayne, they winked at me in a reassuring kind of way. For some weird reason I felt safe with them. They were both wearing identical black leather bomber jackets and talked almost like twin brothers. Oh, and they were both at least six foot three and must have each weighed about eighteen stone. They were old school chums and both had strong Jamaican accents with a London twang.

Bill insisted I sat with him on the plane. It was a tight squeeze. I remember the propellers starting up very noisily, which bothered me because they coughed and spat a lot. Take-off was bumpy and the plane seemed to only just get off the ground before we ran out of crumbling tarmac. As it veered upwards, I noticed the virtually full moon backlighting the tree-tops just a few feet below us. But Bill and his cronies didn’t seem to give a fig. They were passing round scotch and vodka bottles and filling themselves up as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

‘So where we goin’?’ I asked Bill when the plane finally settled on an even keel.

‘Ireland, my son,’ came the response.

I wanted to ask him who my opponent was, especially since he hadn’t mentioned a word about him. But I didn’t have the bottle so I sat there without saying another word.

Bill totally misinterpreted my awkward silence. ‘You’ll get paid straight after the fight this time.’

Money was the last thing on my mind as the plane bounced up and down while we hit some turbulence. All around me the booze continued flowing. The only other people as quiet as me were the minders Neville and Wayne at the back. They both had Walkmans plugged in and were sipping out of Evian bottles. I pretended to sleep alongside Bill but my mind was buzzing with concern about the fight.

Eventually, the pilot came over the PA system. As it crackled, I wondered if he was about to tell us about engine trouble but, through his strong Irish accent, he announced our descent. He never mentioned the name of the place we were landing at but none of the old soaks on board that night cared, and they were footing the bill.

The plane coasted down so quietly I thought the pilot had switched off the engines to save petrol. We landed with a thump on a field that was littered with cowpats. Torches strapped to buckets had been turned into makeshift landing lights.

It looked like a field in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t even tell you if we were in the north or the south of Ireland but I suppose it was most probably the south. The plane sliced through a few nettles as it taxied over towards a small tin shack in a corner of the field. A white transit van and two four-wheel-drive
motors were parked up. Me, Wayne and Neville plus Bill headed straight for the van. As we drove off, all I could make out were the tail-lights of the two cars in front, containing Bill’s cronies. I still had a bad feeling, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I was in the middle of a strange country with a bunch of hoods about to attend a fight that might cost me my life.

I was crammed next to Neville and Wayne on a makeshift wooden bench across the back of the full-panelled transit with Bill up front with the driver. It turned out to be an even bumpier ride than on that little plane across the water. Eventually, our Irish driver spoke: ‘Only about ten minutes to go, lads.’

Then we drove across a rattling cattle grid and into a farm. We were waved through by a man at the gate, who was packing a shotgun. Half a mile further down a muddy, slippery track, the van approached a big, modern corrugated-type barn sitting out in the middle of a field. The cars carrying Bill’s pals drove through an opening in the barn. Just then our van stopped a hundred yards from the same entrance. Our driver pulled out a walkie-talkie, switched it on with a crackle and talked in what sounded like Gaelic.

Just then Bill – still sitting up front – turned to me and said: ‘You all set, Son?’

“S’pose so,’ I shrugged.

Truth was, I was far from happy. Everything about this fight didn’t quite gel. Perhaps these geezers were IRA and they were planning to kill us all at the end of the fight, whatever the result? No-one would know what had happened to any of us. We were a long way from home.

‘You properly warmed up?’ asked Bill.

‘Bit tight,’ I replied.

Bill promised I’d get a couple of minutes to limber up once we got inside.

A voice came from the driver’s walkie-talkie as it crackled back into life and the van moved off towards the barn. Three heavy-looking types at the door to the barn waved us in. Inside, I immediately noticed a cattle pen. The floor was muddy and smelly and the van skidded slightly. Beyond the cattle pens was a ring like a mini auditorium. We were in a cattle market. At least there was no cage this time so I wouldn’t be penned in like a monkey at the zoo. But then again, I was being treated no better than cattle this time, so what was the difference?

I spotted my opponent almost immediately because he was already pacing up and down inside the ring, dressed in a big white shirt with a bright-green shamrock across his chest. The atmosphere was very different from my first fight. This time there wasn’t a woman in sight and the punters looked like hard farmer types, with ruddy faces and wellies. The cars weren’t so flash either, but the atmosphere was far more intimidating because this lot looked like they’d shoot you as soon as look at you.

I even spotted what looked like a few local coppers in uniforms amongst the crowd, taking their seats in the ring’s auditorium. There were bales of hay everywhere and a lot of slippery cow dung.

‘Who the fuck are they?’ I muttered.

‘Don’t worry, Son,’ said Bill. Then, completely ignoring my remark, he explained, ‘He won’t come straight at you. They have to signal first. It’s part of the rules over here.’

Part of the rules? I thought to myself. Since when were there any fucking rules? But it wasn’t the look of the fighter that bothered me. I was more concerned by the set-up. I couldn’t see a way out of here safely if we upset any of these evil bastards.

As we jumped out of the van, Bill shook hands with an Irishman who appeared out of nowhere. The two men then led me, Wayne and Neville towards the ring area. The noise subsided a bit as we walked towards the ring. Each step seemed to throw up a handful of dust, and the lighting was curiously low, making it all seem hazy.

‘You ready, Son?’ asked Bill as we moved through the crowds, careful not to catch anyone’s glance. I didn’t reply. Ahead of me I could see my opponent screaming his head off in the ring, pacing up and down like a right nutter. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying – it sounded like gibberish. But he looked much fitter than my last victim. He was in his mid-twenties, a big, tall, healthy-looking, farmer-boy type. His build was similar to mine. Just then a shiver ran through me as if someone had just walked over my grave. It was an ominous sign.

This time there was no ringmaster in sight. As we got past the cattle pens on the way to the actual ring, my eyes locked onto my opponent properly for the first time. He was trying to bore holes into my head with his gaze. I shrugged and snarled. Two could play at that game. Just then someone in the background shouted, ‘Get a move on, Brit boy.’

Then another voice: ‘Gonna teach you a lesson, Sonny.’

As I sauntered into the ring, Bill muttered something just before standing back: ‘You’re on your own now, Son.’

I was just about to say, ‘What about that warm-up you
promised me?’ when I turned and realised the fight had already started.

Suddenly the ring seemed to shrink in size. I looked across and my opponent was coming towards me in a boxing stance, guard up, feet apart. So I played it his way and put up my dukes. We began by punching each other like legit fighters. I liked it. Maybe this wasn’t going to be a fight to the death like I’d feared after all? We were testing each other out like real boxers do at the start of a fight.

He was a fair old puncher but not that accurate, and kept catching the top of my head, which must have hurt him more than me. But he seemed to think that if he carried on punching away he’d eventually wear me out. Then I put on a bit of an Ali shuffle and soon found out he was as flat-footed as a Sumo wrestler.

I started catching him with some decent jabs. I played it very defensive, trying to wear him out. We carried on like that for what seemed like a couple of minutes. But this crowd wasn’t here for a display of clean boxing. They started jeering.

My opponent reacted by coming at me with a flurry of left hooks and then a whacking right-hander. But I managed to dip low under most of his punches. Then I gave him an ‘Iron Mike’ fist jab in the ribs and heard them crunch, like twigs snapping. I kept stabbing away at them and heard more cracks. More body shots followed. He was soon blowing badly which meant he was in trouble. The home crowd went quiet. That silence made it easier for me to hear the damage I was inflicting on my opponent.

I finished him off with a right across the throat. He went down holding his neck and gargling. His breathing on the floor
was uneven and his skin was changing colour rapidly. I stood back, waiting for him to get up.

Just then the audience came alive again. ‘Cheatin’ fuckin’ Brit bastard.’